Syndicate

Statistics

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

PALESTINIAN BRAIN DRAIN

Having voted for Hamas, Palestinians now seem inclined to vote with their feet:

A growing number of Palestinians are openly saying they’d like to leave the West Bank and Gaza if given the chance, raising concern about the possibility of a Palestinian brain drain.

They weren’t too concerned about that back when they were stuffing detonators in their kids’ underpants and sending them off to be fitted with Semtex shirts. Brains were drained all over the place.

Birzeit University pollster Nader Said, who has monitored emigration attitudes for 12 years, says the percentage of Palestinians willing to relocate once hovered just below 20 percent. When that figure jumped to 32 percent in a September survey, Mr. Said says he was shocked.

The catalyst, the pollster says, has been Palestinian disillusionment following Hamas’s half-year in government. “What the Israelis were unable to do - try to push the Palestinian out of the country - the internal strife is achieving,” he says.

Driving instructor Jawad Abul Sheikh, 38, also a father of five, said the government should step down. “The whole region is standing against them, not only Israel and the West,” he said of the Hamas rulers.

The main problem for Hamasters is their refusal to renounce terrorism and recognise Israel, which results—surprise!—in civilised nations withholding financial aid. So, is Hamas moving any closer to these positions? Hamas if:

Mahmoud al-Zahar, foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority’s Hamas-led government:We will never recognize Israel. The Zionists have occupied our land like the Nazis did with France during the Second World War. Israel is a foreign element in the Middle East. Why don’t the Jews establish their state in Europe?